The Elemental Mysteries: Complete Series (64 page)

“Guess I found your provenance,” Beatrice said.

His eyes raked over her face. “I always knew you would.”

Beatrice thrust her hip back, tossing her sparring partner over her shoulder. The large man hit the floor with a loud
slap
, and she straightened with a grunt as her
sensei
smiled from across the mat. She held a hand out to her partner to help him up. They bowed to each other and shook hands as they finished the freestyle judo practice.

Pete called out, “B, you are on a roll today! What’s gotten into you? Very nice
randori
, both of you. Very nice.” The wiry, grey-haired man strode across the mat and shook both Beatrice and her partner’s hands before all three walked to the lockers near the free weights. “B, you still have one of the strongest
harai goshi
I’ve seen. I know you were dissatisfied with your last teacher, but your forms are really strong.”

She nodded and wiped the sweat from her eyes. “Thanks. He was great, I just felt like he’d taken me as far as I could go in my training. I felt like I was in a rut, you know?”

Pete nodded and slapped her shoulder. “No worries, I understand. Sometimes a relationship just runs its course. I hope you parted on good terms.”

Beatrice nodded and untied her belt, taking off her heavy
judogi
and stripping down to a tank top to hit the punching bags on the side of the studio.

“How long have you been studying?”
 

“Judo?”

Pete nodded.

“Well, when I first moved out to L.A., I started studying martial arts. First, it was just some tai chi at the university. A friend suggested it. Then I decided to take a self-defense class—”

“Always a good idea for anyone.”

“Yeah, I can agree with that. Anyway, the place I went to taught judo and jujitsu, too, so I got interested that way. I’ve been studying almost five years now.”

She slipped on her gloves and Pete joined her at the bags. They both began hitting the teardrop shaped speed bags that hung from platforms in the low ceiling. Soon, Beatrice was zoning out to the sound and the rhythm of the quick punches as she tried to release the stress of the day and her last meeting with Giovanni.

Focus, focus, focus,
she thought as she tried to wipe the image of his deep green eyes from her mind.

“Your focus is really impressive,” Pete said as he worked the bag to her right. “You should be proud of yourself. You look like you’ve been studying twice as long.”
 

“That’s nice to hear.”
Even though I’m completely distracted at the moment.

Suddenly, he grinned. “What did you like about judo at first? I can almost guess.”

Beatrice laughed. “I saw this little girl toss a guy about a foot taller and seventy pounds heavier than her.”

Pete chuckled as he continued hitting the bag. “Yeah, that’ll do it. It’s pretty great when you realize you can take down someone way stronger than you if you know what you’re doing and use their own strengths against them, right?”

She shook her head. “Pete, you have no idea.”

“Why am I so upset?” Beatrice asked as she drank another glass of wine at Dez’s apartment.

Dez only raised an eyebrow. “Because you now have no handy excuse to see the man you’ve been in love with for five years?”

“I’m not in love with him.”

“Yeah.” Her best friend snorted. “Whatever.”

“I’m not.”

“Okay, then you’re upset because…you’re going to miss the challenge of the project? That is way cooler than most of the stuff we do.” Dez couldn’t contain the grin. “I mean, what a cool job! When you worked for him before, did you ever have a kind of treasure hunt like that? Or was it mostly research and catalogue work?”

Dez sat on the edge of her seat while Beatrice stared at her. “Uh…there may have been a mystery or two that we worked on, yeah.”

“And did you solve it? I mean, how does that work? That’s got to pay pretty well, right? It’s like hiring a private detective to find something. Only it’s someone who knows rare books! Do you think he’s looking for an assistant? I would totally dig something like—”

“He’s kind of a loner, to be honest.”
Kinda
. “I doubt he’d hire…someone to do that stuff when he could just do it himself.” She did wonder who he had doing his computer work for him. Did he just use amnis to get random people to search online? That wasn’t very ethical. Maybe he did need—

“Yeah,” Dez sighed. “I totally get why you’re so hung up on him though. A good-looking Italian book collector who solves historical mysteries? That’s just…”

“What?”
Implausible?

“Hot. I can’t believe Mano’s not insanely jealous of all the time you’re spending with him.”

Beatrice felt her face heat up, and she caught Dez’s wide-eyed look.

“He doesn’t know, does he?”
 

She shrugged. There was no way on God’s green earth Beatrice was telling Mano that she was working alongside a five-hundred-year-old vampire who was linked to her missing father and was the sire of the monster who had kidnapped her. There was no way she was telling anyone any of that. They’d think she was insane.

“Oh, he’s going to be pissed, B!”

“Why? The research is done.” And her heart still ached over it. “Why would I see him anymore?” She shook her head and continued quietly. “He’ll probably leave town again now that he has it.”

Dez frowned. “I thought you said he bought a house?”

So he had, and she’d been asked over for dinner more than once by the persistent Ben. It was both despicable and adorable that Giovanni seemed to have Ben on his team in his attempts to win her back. She had to admit, the boy was charming.

As was his fake uncle.

“So he’s probably going to use Southern California as a base for work if he did that,” Dez reasoned. “It would be a good one. Easy airport access and lots of international flights to both Europe and Asia. Big research libraries and plenty of resources.”

“That’s true.”

“And a cute librarian he’s obviously still got the hots for.”

“Shut up, Dez.”

“Not on your life.”

Beatrice was still thinking about what Dez had said when her best friend dropped her off at her empty house. Would Giovanni leave? What if he really was serious about staying in her life? What did that mean for her? For him? For her relationship with her incredibly loving but clueless boyfriend? Mano had a dive in the morning, so she was alone when she picked up the shoebox she had brought from Houston five years before.

Beatrice opened the lid and pulled out a picture of her and her father. Stephen De Novo’s dark brown eyes stared at her. She still missed him so much. It was worse knowing he was out there somewhere, and she just couldn’t find him. What did it all mean? Why had he never come? Maybe her father didn’t trust Giovanni, but couldn’t he trust her? What was the secret he was still running from after fifteen years?

Was Giovanni her best chance at finding him?

Had Lorenzo already found him?

Would Giovanni’s son find her again?

She shook her head and replaced the lid on the old box, shoving it back on the bottom of the bookshelf in the living room. She didn’t have room in her life for another mystery. She had built a good life. A safe life. She didn’t want to be pulled into the chaos of the past.

But when she closed her eyes that night, a dulcet laugh haunted her dreams, and her father’s eyes pleaded with her to find him. Beatrice woke with a start to see the moon shining through the narrow window of her bedroom. In her drowsy state, she looked for Giovanni beside her.

Just as it had been for the past five years, he was nowhere to be found.

Chapter Five

Los Angeles, California

November 2009

Two weeks.

Giovanni’s immortal life was measured in two-week intervals.

After her find at the library, Beatrice had given him two weeks to prove they could be friends again. While he knew he wouldn’t be satisfied with only that, he realized she still had doubts about his intentions, so he tried to back off and give her some space. They had been friends first, and he could be a friend again.

For a while.

So they met for coffee and conversation. She came to dinner at the house with Ben acting as an enthusiastic chaperone. Giovanni waited outside the library when she worked late just to walk her to her motorcycle.

And at the end of two weeks, she told him he was allowed to be in her life…as a friend. So he gamely ignored her racing heart every time she saw him and the loaded looks she cast his direction when she thought he wasn’t looking and pretended to be Beatrice’s friend for a while.

Two weeks turned into four, and they met for coffee a few times each week after her judo class. She had recently begun practice with a new teacher.
 

“Pete’s so good. I mean, he kind of beats me up—”

Giovanni couldn’t contain the low growl, and she shot him a look.

“—but in a good way. Since I’ve changed to this studio, I’ve made a lot more progress. And I’m a lot stronger. They focus on conditioning more than my old place.”

“You look stronger. And your balance has improved.”

She smiled. “I love judo. It’s so much fun. Have you ever studied martial arts?” She laughed. “Do you even need to?”

“My physical conditioning with my father was based on the Spartan
agoge
, so I learned about most military and fighting techniques that way, but Tenzin trained me more on hand-to-hand fighting styles. I picked up whatever she taught me, which was a strange mix of ‘do whatever will kill your opponent the fastest,’ and her sire’s form of
wushu
, or kung fu, as humans refer to it.”

“Cool. Tenzin’s the one who recommended I take tai chi when I first moved to California. That’s kind of what started me out. I still practice.”

“Tai chi?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded, letting a smirk cross his lips when he thought about his old friend.

“And Mano studied martial arts in the military. He still does some kick boxing. Sometimes we practice together.”

He made no response, choosing to ignore the existence of the boyfriend whenever she brought him up.

 
Beatrice had told Mano that Giovanni was an old friend from Houston who had recently moved to town and a mutual friend of Carwyn’s whom she had worked for in the past. He had a feeling that the boyfriend was clueless about more than his and Beatrice’s past relationship.

He leaned toward her in the crowded café. “So you really haven’t told anyone? Not even Dez? About your father or Carwyn or…anything?” He blew on the fragrant coffee he held, heating his breath to heighten the scent since it had cooled.
 

“
No
, I didn’t tell anyone. What would I say?” She lowered her voice. “Oh, hey, Dez, you know my friend, Carwyn? He’s a thousand-year-old Welsh priest who hunts deer and drinks their blood. Oh, and my father is a vampire, too, but I haven’t seen him for almost fifteen years so I don’t know what he eats. And I was kidnapped by a vampire once, but don’t worry, my boss—who I was kind of involved with, but not really—rescued me with his two best friends, one of whom can fly and the other who can tunnel underground like a giant gopher.”

He shrugged. “Seems totally believable to me. And we were most definitely involved.”

Beatrice rolled her eyes and took a sip of coffee. “Right, and were you going to swoop in and rescue me when they carted me off to the looney bin?”

“I will always swoop in and rescue you, whether from psychotic vampires or the men in white coats.”

He caught the small smile she tried to hide and held up his cup of coffee, inhaling deeply.

“Why do you even order it, Gio?”

“I told you, I like the way it smells.”

Beatrice shook her head and leaned back in the plush chair. She closed her eyes and he allowed his gaze to caress her face while she was unaware. He’d been dancing around his feelings for well over a month, and it was becoming increasingly harder to keep silent.
 

He forced himself to remain casual, more interested in regaining her trust than in satisfying himself. Tenzin’s admonition to be patient seemed more and more apt every day.

“So,” he cleared his throat. “I have a favor to ask, which you are in no way obligated to grant, but I thought I’d ask anyway.”

She kept her eyes closed but mumbled, “Does it involve blood donation?”

“Are you offering?”

Beatrice cracked one eye open and grimaced. “No.”

“Then how about taking Ben to the doctor?”

Her head shot up. “Why? Is he okay?”

“Nothing to worry about that I know of. He just needs a regular doctor. And you wouldn’t even have to go in with him—I’m sure he’d be mortified if you did—just drive him. He needs a checkup and none of the pediatricians in the area have evening hours. I can write a note as his guardian, of course.”

She thought for a moment before she nodded. “I can do that. Let me get my schedule for next week and I’ll see what days would be best.”